Running
by Keraniwolf
Summary: After The Angels Take Manhattan, I couldn't help but imagine what life would be like for Amy and Rory. This is the first in a collection of short, descriptive stories following the Ponds in an AU past. It's set near the end of the run of tales, because I figured it'd make a better intro than the chronologically correct bits. XD


**Those Magnificent Ponds**

A Series of Rather Brief Shorts

About The Family Pond

**Running**

Sometimes, they would hear people's amazement over the clarity of the radio ("like they're talking in the room with me!") or the invention of the television or some other technological advancement and they would share a look: the one with that secretive, nostalgic, half-pained, half-overjoyed smile in it. The look that said that they were thinking of exactly the same thing… and it wasn't any of the truly futuristic, bizarre, alien things they had seen. It wasn't holographic projections or spaceships or cryogenic freezing or time travel or even that ever-versatile sonic screwdriver which came to their minds. No, the first thought for them was the memory of their Doctor playing virtual tennis on the Wii they had bought for him in that brief and wonderful span of time—in the future, in _their_ past, it didn't matter—when he had lived with them.

They would share that smile for a fraction of a second, and they would look at whoever was speaking and assure them this was just the _beginning_ of the amazing things that people would accomplish. They would have to be vague about it more often than not, gleefully hinting around about the gravity of the things humanity would do—and that was just by the time _they_ were born into the world, let alone by the point of any of those future times The Doctor had shown them and spoken about more than once. It hurt a little when this happened, but there was something wonderful in the memory as well.

They found themselves talking about him more than they had expected to, really. It seemed that every little thing somehow related to The Doctor or their families or the 2000's in some way or another. They spent so much time remembering things that were yet to happen, always referring to those experiences and the 21st century itself as "back home" and holding them very close. They laughed and smiled and cried and went silent for long periods of time because of those important, ancient, yet-to-have-happened memories. The phrase itself became something sacred to them.

Very slowly, however, and very subtly, the memories left. They were still _there_, of course, but they were no longer so easily stirred back up to the surfaces of their minds. They left the day to day lives of those two time-trapped individuals. Those important, ancient, yet-to-be-necessary words gradually fell from their lips, references to that long period of their life together slowing to a halt and their use of the phrase reducing until they simply… stopped saying it altogether. For a time, where they were became all the home that they had, even after decades of knowing they had once belonged to another. Never, though, did this timeline become quite all the home that they needed. Even at her happiest, Amelia Pond could still feel a piece of herself missing—and she knew that Rory was the same, no matter how he seemed on the outside.

It had been a long time since the battle they had waged against the Weeping Angels, but they had only stopped talking about it for three years when they went walking out in the cold and snow of a Christmas Eve with their arms looped tightly around each other. They often went on walks like this around Christmas time. At first it had been because it was a good way to remember how very much The Doctor loved Christmases, and thereby to remember The Doctor, without allowing themselves to be held captive by how much they missed him. Later, it became little more than a bittersweet tradition they could not bring themselves to stop.

That particular night, they passed a police box which stood between two lampposts on the path they frequented where the snow was light enough to walk on. The blue of it stood out to Amy and stopped her in her tracks. She stood looking at it for a long moment, swaying slightly in the cold December wind. Rory let her be, knowing by now that to try and move her was as futile as trying to open the Pandorica without a genetic key. He held her a little closer as she watched it, pressing his lips gently against the top of her head without actually touching her. She didn't need to be disturbed. He could wait. Oh, had he ever proven that he could wait.

The color was wrong, was the thing. It was blue, yes, but it wasn't the right blue. It wasn't "the bluest blue ever." It wasn't TARDIS blue any more than the snow was pure white. There was an imperfection in the hue, something added yet missing… it wasn't the color of that other police box she knew so well. In spite of her misgivings, the still fiery red-headed Scottish woman walked very slowly and hesitantly towards the box; dragging her husband almost willingly along with her. She ran her fingers along the door, knowing just from that one touch what she would find within. Resignedly, she took the handle and pulled the door outwards. A dark maw of emptiness stared back at her, of a place to contain criminals, of a police box. There was no special place contained within that police box. It certainly wasn't any bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. It was just a blue police box. Not even proper TARDIS blue.

She grabbed Rory's arm a little tighter, willing away any tears she might have shed. He had never liked to see her cry. None of her boys had ever liked to see her cry, but him least of all. He always felt as if he was somehow _responsible_ for it. To be fair, in a way: this time, he actually was.

"We need to run," she said simply in her always very distinctive Scottish accent.

"What? What from?" her husband asked, looking around quickly. He didn't scare as easily as he had before the Weeping Angels, but it wasn't hard to tell that the hackles on the back of his neck had risen at the mention of running. He flinched when his wife punched him very lightly on the arm, no longer holding on to him.

"Not like that, you idiot!" she admonished him, laughing for a second before she recomposed herself. She said nothing for a long moment, looking from Rory to the police box and half-wishing that they were different and that she could have another chance. She shook it off, though he could still hear the wistful sadness in her voice and in her eyes. "It's been so silent these last few years, Rory. So, so silent. We haven't even said his name or anything for three years. Three whole years," she took a deep breath, looking him in the eye, "he told me once, will tell me, that he wasn't running away. He said he was running _towards us_, so he could see us and be with us before we were gone. We thought we were running away from him for so long, Rory, that if we stopped talking about him then we would stop missing him. But that isn't how it works. We didn't even see where we were running before we stopped. We need to start running again, just like The Doctor. We need to start running towards him."

"But…" the Last Centurion sighed, hating the way his mind worked just as he had many times since he married his wife so far off in the future, "he might not come back at all, Amy. He might not even be able to visit us at all. Besides, we don't know when or where he would show up. Why would he ever come to New York, anyway? What important things happen here?"

"Us. He'd come here for us. There are important things coming up in America, and even if he doesn't come for those he'll still have us to come to. And…" she held his gaze steadily, water shining on the surface of her eyes, "even if he never does come for us again, we can't be running from him and we can't be waiting. We have to run towards him. We have to remember. We have to talk about it… about what it was like," Amelia broke her eyes from his and looked over at the police box extending its dark and empty contents towards them as she finished her sentence, "back home."

The wind began to whistle through the barren branches of nearby trees, snow coming up in little flurries of peaceful travel around their feet, and Amy grabbed onto her husband's arm again and tenderly leaned into him. They both stared at the box that was not blue enough; the box that was an imposter; the box that was not, they realized now, their home. It wasn't the 2000's, exactly, that they missed; growing up together and "raising" Melody to become River Song and living their lives in Leadworth. It wasn't even the house which The Doctor had bequeathed to them and the life they had started within it, Brian Williams visiting as often as he could and friends building a social schedule around them. It wasn't the modern conveniences of that time's domesticity which was so much more alluring than the domesticity of the New York to which the Angels had sent them. No, it was the thrill of the adventures they had, the heart-pounding excitement and tender moments and love and anger and mercy and justice and that special, whirring TARDIS engine sound that never did let daily life carry on very consistently.

Most of all, home was how they had fallen more in love than ever when the whole universe tried to tear them apart, how they had found and held on to each other; it was their daughter, River, when they were lucky enough to see her; it was that cheerful, eccentric TARDIS herself; it was, of course, The Doctor. They had talked so long about "back home," but they had always assumed they were talking about Leadworth and Amelia's old house and the house with the fancy car where The Doctor played tennis all day for months on end. They had never imagined that they were talking about the traveling and the TARDIS themselves.

"We'll run, then," Rory said softly to the faint light of the starry night and to the snow brightly reflecting the lampposts and to the police box still not materializing into anything more than an ordinary police box and to his still quiet wife, "He would have us run, I know he would, so we'll run. We'll talk about him again. We'll talk about all of it again. We'll get back home, Amy. Maybe not in person like we used to want, but… in what we say… and what we do. We will get home. I promise."

"Thank you," neither of them were entirely sure that she was thanking her husband, but both let the uncertainty of the moment melt away into the other gentle noises of the night. Rory nudged softly, subtly, and Amy started walking alongside him just as they had before. Another gust picked up the snowflakes all around them, and they could have sworn they heard home in those wintry winds: the immortal words, "come along, Ponds."

"Do you remember," Rory began, smiling to himself at the memory, "when he called me and my dad Ponds and my dad tried to tell him that he was actually a Williams?"

Amy laughed, enhancing the cold flush on her cheeks, their pace falling back into a pleasant rhythm as they neared their house, "And he couldn't say a word to defend himself, the poor man."

"''Course you are!'" they quoted together, mimicking their Doctor's voice as well as they could for the first time in over three years, "'sit down!'"

There was still sadness there, of course. There was still pain. So long as he failed to show up, there always would be pain where once he had been. Even so, their laughter echoed through the streets and bounced off of lampposts and snow banks and spiraled its way up into the stars where the words of home were still lingering on.

The Doctor called the Ponds, and they came running back to him. They stopped trying to fight off their memories of him and reconstructed once more the TARDIS they had built for themselves in their minds. They had been running in the wrong direction for three long years, but Amelia and Rory Pond were on their way to go back home—and when a small child in the house next door started arguing with his dad about how color TV wasn't as impressive as he seemed to think, they looked at each other with a very secretive, nostalgic, bittersweet smile in their eyes. They knew something that he didn't. They knew that this was just the beginning.


End file.
